I awoke to the sound of Mrs. Curmudgeon swearing. This isn’t unusual, she’s more of a morning person than me but that’s like saying an untamed lioness is cuddlier than a nuclear bomb. Basically, our house isn’t safe for anyone until the coffee is done.
This morning’s swearing was a different tone. Slightly more urgent; a bit of an edge. I listened but decided to stay put. I didn’t hear gunfire and I didn’t smell coffee so maybe bed was a good place to stay? Caution was in order. Never get in a land war in Asia…
Then I heard it. “Goddamn it! The bacon too?!?”
RED ALERT!
I hauled ass to the scene of the disaster. Dead freezer. NOOOOOOO!
A rough way to start the day. Nobody should be knee deep in slimy bad meat before they’ve had their morning coffee. Alas, these things happen.
It was a large upright freezer that had died from top toward bottom. Some stuff was still frozen at the bottom and some was way gone at the top. In between, ya place your bets and you take your chances. I’m not into food poisoning so we were cautious.
We picked through the wreckage and luckily most of the bacon and venison steak was good. As was a lot of the fish I’ve caught. Some was coffee so that was definitely safe. (We keep whole beans frozen to maintain freshness but it’s not like beans go bad like meat.) A little more was safe to go straight into the oven for a huge lunch. The rest? Gone…
The good news is that I’d hedged my bets. Ever paranoid and a touch of a survivalist, we have two freezers. One is none and two is one. We now have one. Honestly, I’d fretted more over power than the freezer itself. My “use this generator to keep food cold in case of power outages” plan wasn’t going to save the day. It may save some other day.
I didn’t plan it that way but since the newer freezer is still ice cold clean up and triage went much faster. Without it we’d have lost much more and spent all day screwing around with ice and coolers. And likely buying first freezer I could find.
As it was we lost lot a lot of ham and chicken. It was a sad drive to the dump. I have no idea what the financial loss would be, it was mostly things I’d raised or hunted. It’s a moot point anyway.
I reminded myself that the best of all possible “first world problems” to have is “one of my two freezers failed and it was a partial loss of the huge supply of food I keep on hand“. When you think of it that way, it’s a good time to be alive.
It’s been a rough winter financially. There’s been a dead washing machine, a currently defunct dryer, and now a dead freezer. (Surprisingly, I had backups for two of three. I had an old “spare” dryer already semi-installed with a duplicate redundant vent. I had it up and running in half an hour. Know anyone with two dryers? We also lost one of two freezers which still puts us many hundreds of pounds of food ahead of none.) They say these things come in threes. Lets hope so ’cause I’m punch drunk.
It could have been worse. Much worse! Ask anyone in Venezuela if my sob story seems pretty much better than the best day of their year. That said, bad luck still sucks and some years are more expensive than others.